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Media in Crisis: The Thrill is Gone

September 07, 2012

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here's a story. Joe Kildea in the Daily Caller: "Why Has the Democratic National Convention Been Such a Disaster?" The Daily Caller is Chatsworth Osborne Jr.'s website. "When asked about the Democratic convention in Charlotte, NC, Mitt Romney called it a 'celebration of failure.' Granted, he may be a little biased. Yet the spectacle coming out of the DNC this week is hard to ignore or even gloss over with well-intentioned words. Frankly, it’s been a disaster. Exhibit A is the Democrats’ embarrassing ham-fisted reversal on their party platform," where God got booed.

Another embarrassment, Debbie "Blabbermouth" Schultz. Then there was the "ABC/Washington Post poll that was released Tuesday night showing President Obama with a 47 percent favorability rating." We've talked about that poll quite a bit on this program, but I'll tell you, it hasn't been discussed widely, but this poll was devastating news to Obama and the Democrats, and that's why it wasn't discussed much. His favorability, 47%, this was the poll earlier this week in which it was revealed that he's losing ground big time with women, and it had everybody on the Democrat side just stunned. After all this money that they've spent tarring and feathering Romney and Ryan, the War on Women, devotion at the convention, they love women, they love abortion, they love condoms, they love birth control pills, and not only is Romney up about ten with men, but Obama was only up one in this poll with women. And they were shocked.

"Last week, Republicans in Tampa talked about the $16 trillion national debt, job creation and tax reform. This week in Charlotte, Democrats are talking about free contraception, abortion rights and even more public spending (or, as they call it, 'investment'). Perhaps the average female voter doesn’t care as much about free contraception as the Democrats think they do. In contrast, the Republican convention, objectively speaking, went fairly smooth. Put another way: These conventions reflect the personalities of the two parties’ respective nominees. On the right is Mitt Romney -- a man well-schooled in the art of good management. On the left is President Obama -- a man with no real management skills."

Folks, it really was a disaster. You can't judge this on the basis of the energy level of the delegates or the attendees. It was. Whether people saw it that way or not, forget perception. I know perception is said to be reality. In this case, if this had been our convention, we would be feeling devastated. If this kind of stuff had happened at ours, we would think it's over. It was not done well. It was a mishmash. Your slogan is "Forward," and your heroes at this convention are dinosaurs -- Ted Kennedy and Clinton. The theme is War on Women, and your two big stars are womanizers? One of your big stars you can't even invite -- John Edwards. And then the piece de resistance, the grand finale is a dud -- Obama's speech.

"In Tampa, Republicans moved their convention around to accommodate a hurricane. In Charlotte, the Democrats panicked over a 30 percent chance of precipitation. When Republicans poked fun at the switcheroo, one Obama campaign official said, 'If we were worried about our crowd size, we certainly wouldn’t listen to Mitt Romney about how to build a crowd.' Why’s that? Because the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City wasn’t one of the most watched, most financially successful Olympics in recent history? Oh wait." It was. Everywhere you look, in comparison, the Republican convention was professional. They accomplished what they set out to accomplish. The Democrat convention was an absolute disaster.

Audio sound bites. Here's Bob Schieffer in crisis. Obama's speech just didn't live up to Clinton's.

SCHIEFFER: This was not the kind of speech that Bill Clinton made last night. You just... It just didn't have that little spark, it seemed to me, uh, that Clinton had over and over again. I thought it was a good speech. Uhhh, I thought he, uh, laid out, uhhh, his side of the story here. That soaring rhetoric, uh, that we've heard in, uh, the speech in 2008? I didn't hear that tonight. Maybe it's just me. But maybe I'm still getting over the Bill Clinton speech last night.

RUSH: Yeah. That's probably true. I think these people are totally in the tank and absorbed with Clinton. But, you see, it wasn't just me thinking this thing was a bomb. People on the left thought so, too. Here. Charlie Rose and David Brooks on the Charlie Rose Show on PBS last night. Listen to this...

ROSE: Jodi Kantor. We had Dave Maraniss in here. Peter Baker's got a new piece that's coming up in Vanity Fair. A piece by Michael Lewis. What comes out of this is the enormous competitiveness of the president, number one. Number two, sometime -- something bordering on arrogance. And number three, that at times he can believe more in his abilities than justified.

BROOKS: Yeah. Well, that's for sure. And then the -- the fourth thing that I would add to that is at anti-political aloofness. This has been a conscious strategy of, uhh, the people around him: Separate him from the politicians. He's not a normal politician. He's a transformational figure, here.

ROSE: Transformational to what?

BROOKS: (snickers) I don't know. (unintelligible) Messiah.

ROSE: You want to be a transformational figure, you gotta be taking us somewhere.

Jodi Kantor, that's the Sunday New York Times piece where people call Obama arrogant and aloof, not a nice guy. The Maraniss biography basically exposed the lies in Obama's books. The Politico says Obama hadn't given a good speech in two years. Peter Baker's article in the New York Times yesterday was something else. But it's all this stuff. What Charlie is alluding to that he doesn't get is that what these people are doing is preparing, if necessary, to throw Obama overboard in order to save the ideology.

Which will happen, if they think Obama is gonna lose. If they ever reach that conclusion before the election, then it's time to circle the wagons around liberalism, time to circle the wagons around socialism, statism, Trotskyites, Marxism, whatever. Circle the wagons and save that. That cannot be blamed if Obama is gonna lose. Now, for David Brooks, I'd say, "What's the problem, pal?" Obama's crease in his slacks is identical to what it was four years ago when you said that the crease in his slacks really impressed you.

It told you that he was not just gonna be president, he was gonna be a good one! Has something happened to the crease in his slacks, David? No, I'm not making this up. David Brooks said that. I have new members of the audience every day here. The tune-in factor is out of sight. David Brooks of the New York Times actually said, four years ago, that one of the things that impressed him about Obama was the crease in his slacks when they had dinner at George Will's house. He wrote that he knew Obama was gonna be a great president just because of that.